Simi Horwitz is a feature writer and film reviewer based in New York City. In 2022, she received first place for film criticism from the Society for Feature Journalism, and in 2023, a New York Press Club Award for an Entertainment News feature; and three Los Angeles Press Club Awards, including first place for film criticism — all for pieces published in the Forward.
Simi Horwitz
By Simi Horwitz
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Culture How a Jewish marketing whiz tried to save old-time Russian hockey
Though some knowledge of (and interest in) the national ice hockey team of the former Soviet Union (CCCP) might help you to appreciate Gabe Polsky’s new documentary, “Red Penguins,” it’s not essential. Even without a solid hockey background — for that, see Polsky’s earlier doc “Red Army” — this is an oddly fascinating story. It’s…
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Culture In Nazi-era Austria, he needed a father; he found Sigmund Freud
Nikolaus Leytner’s “The Tobacconist,” is one of the more striking and nuanced movies to deal with the rise of Nazism. Set in Vienna in the 30’s, and based on Robert Seethaller’s 2017 best-selling novel, it’s a coming of age tale that recounts the experiences of Franz (Simon Morze), a horny 17-year-old whose personal, political and…
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Film & TV ‘I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I wasn’t a Jew’ — Tamar Manasseh’s brave journey
Tamar Manasseh, the mother of two teenagers, remembers hearing about another young mom who had been shot and killed while attempting to break up a fight in broad daylight. “The newscasters said ‘She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Manasseh, 41, told me over the phone from her home on Chicago’s south…
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Culture Introducing Marcel Marceau, resistance fighter — starring Jesse Eisenberg
As writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz tells it, even in retrospect the filming of “Resistance” was unsettling — from its locales to the timeliness of the topic. The film dramatizes the heroic actions of the Resistance and the Jewish French Boy Scouts as they led 10,000 Jewish orphans out of France, across the Swiss Alps, and into…
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Culture Diagnosing Anti-Semitism as a virulent disease
Emmy Award winning documentarian Andrew Goldberg, 51, has covered many socially/historically significant topics in his films— among them, “The Armenians, A Story of Survival,” to “Proud to Serve: The Men and Women of the US Army,” to “Out in America,” to “The Iranian Americans,” — but the Jewish experience has always been close to his…
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Film & TV Charlotte Gainsbourg: Not Your Typical Jewish Mother
Charlotte Gainsbourg, 48, has little doubt that, over the course of her career, she has chosen, consciously or unconsciously, “transgressive” projects to compensate for her shyness. “So perhaps that’s why I am attracted to the unexpected,” she said during an interview. She has a soft voice with the hint of a British accent. “Also, I…
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Film & TV The Jewish Spy Who Kept Us Safe At Home
A veteran filmmaker looks at baseball catcher-turned-spy Moe Berg
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Culture An Epic German Oscar Nominee That Just Dares You To ‘Look Away’
In 2006, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s first flick, “The Lives of Others,” walked off with an Oscar in the Foreign Language category (after beating out the much favored “Pan’s Labyrinth”). It was a focused, compelling film that explored the lives of two artists and the Stasi agent assigned to keep watch over them in the…
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